Generally described, computing devices and communication networks can be utilized to exchange information. In a common application, a computing device can request content from another computing device via the communication network. For example, a user at a personal computing device can utilize a software browser application to request a Web page from a server computing device via the Internet. In such embodiments, the user computing device can be referred to as a client computing device and the server computing device can be referred to as a content provider.
With reference to an illustrative embodiment, a content provider can provide a network resource, such as a Web page, that can correspond to one or more items available for a user to select, view or indicate a desire to purchase. For example, a content provider can provide a Web page associated with the display and sale of shoes. In this illustrative embodiment, the items corresponding to the Web page (e.g., shoes for sale) can be associated with various attributes, such as foot size, color, manufacturer, style, etc. Accordingly, to allow users to locate one or more specific items, the content provider's Web page can allow users to designate one or more attributes of interest. The designated attributes can then be used as filtering criteria for a greater subset of items, such as a catalog of all shoes available for selection, viewing or purchasing via the Web page. Specifically, the content provider can narrow the subset of items that are presented to a user via the Web page based on matches/exclusions to the filtering criteria. As the process is repeated with additional filtering criteria (e.g., the specification of values for more physical attributes), users may be able to iteratively focus the items available for selection. This type of interaction can be referred to generally as a multi-dimensional selection environment, in which each specified attribute/search criteria corresponds to a “dimension.”
In the above illustrative example of a multi-dimensional selection environment, the subset of items presented to the user have a degree of overlap with regard to multiple physical attributes (e.g., all the shoes have the physical attributes of a size and a color). In one aspect, because of the overlapping physical attributes, the physical attributes are readily known to the users. Thus, the typical user would be able to enter specific physical attribute values (e.g., color) to identify items of interest. In another aspect, the order of the specified physical attribute data is not as relevant in terms of yielding search results. With continued reference to the shoe example, a specification of shoe color first, followed by size will likely yield the same results (or at least similar results) as a specification of size followed by shoe color. However, the traditional multi-dimensional selection environment approach can become deficient for groups of items in which the attributes are not overlapping or have limited overlap.